Brown was refreshingly inconsistent. No, that’s not new, but it has never been more important to the state’s well-being. In a year when many feared Democratic supermajorities in the state Senate and Assembly would run rampant, Sacramento produced surprising touches of moderation.

This is largely to the credit of Brown. His decisions on batches of bills affecting immigrants, the environment and gun control gave both liberals and conservatives something to cheer and boo. His aggressiveness in forging compromises that advanced key pieces of legislation showed that no matter what partisans might think, compromise is not the enemy of progress.

Despite what he has always said about paddling a little on the left and a little on the right to keep the canoe of state on a straight course, Brown and his fellow Democrats paddled more on the left than Republicans would have liked.

But Brown seemed to judge bills on their individual merits, creating a credible mix of new laws.

Freed from last year’s focus on California’s budget crisis and the campaign to pass the Proposition 30 tax hikes, Brown and the Legislature confronted some emotional issues.

A spate of bills addressed immigration. Mostly, the bills’ authors succeeded in expanding the rights of U.S. immigrants. Brown signed bills prohibiting law-enforcement agencies from detaining undocumented immigrants for deportation after arrests for minor crimes; a bill giving the undocumented tighter protection against job discrimination; a bill allowing the undocumented to seek driver’s licenses, and a bill allowing those brought to this country by undocumented parents to practice law. Compromises brought Brown around on the license and detention bills.

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But Brown vetoed a bill that would have allowed non-citizens to serve on juries.

The environment was a big topic this year. Brown was friendly to wild animals in signing a ban on trapping bobcats just outside national and state parks, a big issue around Joshua Tree, and a ban on lead ammunition, which can kill California condors that feed on carcasses left behind by hunters.

But he took a middle path in signing a bill by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Calabasas, restricting fracking. The bill displeased both oil companies, who dislike its regulations, and environmentalists, who sought stronger regulations.

Another hot issue: guns. Brown signed 11 gun-control bills, among them one making it harder to convert guns into assault-style weapons, but vetoed seven, one of which would have outlawed semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines.

In all, Brown signed 805 bills and vetoed 96 — his lowest veto rate in the three years of this term, reflecting his stepped-up work on compromises. Notably, the Democratic Legislature and governor passed only one bill (a minimum-wage increase) of 38 labeled “job killers” by the California Chamber of Commerce.